CCO Campus Ministry

Home / Transformed Lives / Andy Polack

Andy Polack

polack_andy.jpg“I have reams of notes from my summer at the Ocean City Beach Project, all relating to how I can best minister to and engage the world around me,” says Andy Polack. “There is a simple phrase that we learned at OCBP which will always stick with me: ‘to know is to have responsibility to, is to care for.’ As Christians, if we know of people in need, we have a responsibility to them, and we must find ways to care for them. This philosophy is very much in line with a Christian worldview and has helped me to better understand and appreciate the world around me. With that better understanding, I—through the grace of God—have been able to make better and wiser decisions relating to all facets of my life.”

Andy connected to the CCO’s ministry early during his freshman year at Westminster College. He had grown up in a Christian family and was immersed in youth group activities during high school. “There was no doubt that the college experience I was looking and hoping for had a spiritual center,” he says. “That was, in large part, what drew me to a small church-affiliated liberal arts college like Westminster in the first place.”

In addition to his summer at the CCO-sponsored Ocean City Beach Project, a selective leadership development summer opportunity, Andy was involved in ministry activities on campus, volunteered with a local church youth group, and attended the Jubilee conference.

“I was rather self-righteous when I entered college, and probably a bit too egocentric as well,” Andy admits. “The CCO helped me to ‘man up’ to the reality of living a Christian lifestyle. There was a real disconnect for me my freshman year between my personal faith and the way I was living my life. I knew the touchy-feely God of my youth group, but not the God that calls His people to a higher purpose, the God that is completely incompatible with sin. That was the holistic God that the CCO introduced me to over my four years in college.”

Andy graduated from Westminster in 2008, and now works as a computer programmer in Washington, DC. “I work in an office building on a Navy base, surrounded by a bunch of so-called ‘engineering nerds’ all day long,” he says. “I have an entirely different approach to my work than many of my coworkers. I believe that each day God has something he wants to do with me and through me—I need only be quiet and attentive enough to listen to Him. We produce a product which the Navy relies upon; it has to be completely operational. Being responsible to my boss would not, in and of itself, be enough motivation to keep the system that way. I feel a pull from a higher authority to glorify Him in the work I do. It is my hope that this desire to glorify Him is evident at work.”

Andy is also very involved in the life of Gaithersburg Presbyterian Church in Maryland, attending worship, singing in the choir, attending young adults and young professionals groups, and volunteering with the youth group.

“Without a doubt, the CCO framed and shaped the way I viewed my college experience,” says Andy. “It wasn’t just about textbooks—it was about finding an academic and spiritual center to continue on with in my life’s journey. The CCO also taught me to value my time as a student. It was not just a time of waiting to me, but a time of active ministry. The CCO helped me to understand my responsibilities to the community around me—both on campus and in the small college town surrounding it. Were it not for the CCO, I would have never volunteered with the local church youth group in college, and would have never wound up volunteering with the youth group now at my new church home in Gaithersburg. There is no question that the CCO’s ministry provided a model to me in ways to minister to the youth I now volunteer with.”